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Cold war cleanup in the Arctic

Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Tuktoyaktuk (Sep 06/02) - A legacy of the Cold War, the Canadian DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line sites located at the 66th parallel on the Arctic coastline from the Yukon Territory to Baffin Island provided for early detection of an army that never came.

Now, over 40 years later, with advances in radar surveillance technology, the DEW Line facilities are redundant -- replaced by fewer but more modern sites -- but the legacy of the Cold War lives on by what was left behind.

The federal government has allocated some $250 million towards the cleanup of these abandonded sites.

Four of the sites are being reclaimed by E. Gruben's Transport.

Russell Newmark, vice president of E. Gruben Transport, said the sites were surveyed and assessed for the scale of cleanup required.

Some are as simple as picking up garbage, but others require a full reclamation of the soil and demolition of PCB and asbestos-laden buildings.

Newmark relates the assessment of the sites as a hunt through history.

"It's not unlike an archaeological dig," Newmark said. "You're sorting through someone's garbage from 50 years ago."

The sites have PCB painted materials and buildings, asbestos piping and insulation, and contaminated soil with varying concentrations of PCB, lead and cadmium.

The biggest of the four cleanups is at Clinton Point -- between Paulatuk and Kugluktuk -- which began last August and is the largest of the sites to be reclaimed.

The site requires an excavation of some 3,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil that will fill 1,500 sea can containers -- about 200 full dump truck loads.

Cape Perry was already cleaned once but the government detected an old refuse site that also required an excavation.

"We had done the major cleanup in '98, but DND wanted to address another landfill they thought might become a problem, so we're doing a landfill excavation there," he said.

In addition to the landfill, there are PCB painted materials currently stored in 55 NTCL shipping containers that need to be re-packed to ensure paint chips or dust would not leak during shipping.

"A lot of the building components had to be put into containers and Transport Canada was not happy with the way they were contained," Newmark said. "So we're re-packaging them with geomembranes and bracing to ensure that they are sealed."

The waste will be barged to Swan Hills, Alta., but the Gruben contract only takes the containers as far as Hay River.

At Nicholson Point, there are 30 containers of PCB materials that also need re-packing.

At Kittigazuit (Army Camp) Gruben's will be doing a simple cleanup and reclamation.

"It's mostly debris clean-up," he said. "There is a tower that has fallen over and some drums laying around."

Newmark said some of the landfill sites were placed right at the water's edge and hazardous materials were dumped right onto the ground.

"Back then, nobody took heed to where they put them," he said.